I'm over 21, I promise...

This afternoon marked my first experience purchasing a bottle of wine. I spent almost 45 minutes in the grocery store, slowly accumulating all the materials I needed to make dinner, wine included. The process of finding the wine in and of itself was a bit of an adventure. I had (and still have) absolutely no idea of what makes a wine good or not; I just knew that I needed a "young, full-bodied red wine such as a Beaujolais or a Burgundy." Right. Eventually, after staring at the astonishingly wide array of options for a significant amount of time, I decided to save money and buy the least expensive Beaujolais I could find. That probably means that it tasted bad...but I can't tell, and I was only using it to cook anyway. Finally, after I'd perused the rest of the store, picking up things like three pounds (!) of lean stewing beef, tomato paste, and parsley, I headed up to the check out. The lady working scanned everything, saving the bottle of wine until nothing else was left. She asked for my ID, and after struggling to get my license out of my wallet, she took it. Now, I haven't gotten my license updated yet, so the format is that of the under-21 license, complete with a picture of me at age 16. Nonetheless, it very clearly reads that I will be 21 years of age after 2-22-2010. Today is 3-4-10. I think she thought it was fake. She looked at it for what felt like a full three minutes before she finally decided that I wasn't trying to be illegal. Finally, after typing several numbers into the computer (maybe she was trying to calculate my age), she asked, "Does that say...19...80...9?" I assured her that it did, she let me buy the wine, and I went on my merry way. Ironically, I didn't even drink a sip, because I'd bought cider as well and I was more excited to drink that.